Not Chiclets
by TheXGrayXLady
Summary: They're a bunch of ficlets


**Notes: So I'm working on a thirty day OTP challenge that got turned into like a thirty week challenge so yeah, here's some of the XS fic that came out of this. And I still maintain that Snoopy Punches the Happenstance is the funniest phrase ever to be written ever. **

_**So Sexyfine (Music)**_

"Rai? Have you seen my iPod?" she said, sorting through the mess of laundry in the hamper. She thought she left it in her jacket and had to save it before it went through the wash. Raimundo losing two phones since coming to the temple was enough to let her know that none of the boys checked pockets when it was their turn to do the wash. Unless Rai heard loose change.

"Kim, I don't keep track of your stuff. I don't know where…" The weight in in his hoodie pocket clearly said otherwise.

"Raimundo! I've told you a thousand times, don't touch my…"

"Kim! No! It's not ready…" She heard the frantic scramble of bare feet on hardwood floors as he scrambled around the corner.

"What are you doing with my stuff? And you left it in the laundry…"

"Don't listen to it!" He said, sliding into the laundry room and trying to snatch it back from her hands. His fingers brushed against the metal and plastic, tipping it out of her hands and accidentally pressing play as he did so.

As it hit the ground, she heard a familiar voice singing, "Raimundo is so sexyfine, he is so sexyfine he blows your mind, but you cannot have him because he is in love with Kimiko, who is even more sexyfine."

As she picked her jaw up from the floor (this week, in a purely metaphorical sense. It had been agreed upon that the Cosmic Jawbreaker was not one of Dashi's better ideas), Rai continued to sputter words.

"Deus, you weren't supposed to hear that yet, it's not ready and Kieko's still talking to that guy about re-recording the last chorus and the instrumental part wasn't what I expected and the tempo's…"

"Did you get our song made into an actual song?"

**_Can't Watch (Your Own Worst Enemy)_**

He hated watching Chase like this. Not hurting and weak, he didn't care about that, everybody needed help or was hurt sometimes, it was that he was fighting and raging at himself for getting hurt in the first place. Earlier, Guan had tried to convince him that it wasn't his fault, but no matter how hard he tried, Chase was more stubborn.

And as bad as it was that he'd over worked himself into a stress fracture, what was worse was listening to him talk about how if he'd had held out for just one more time around the obstacle course, he would have had it perfect. Perfect. It was strange to hear that word from Chase as if it were something he would always be grasping at, but never quite reaching. From his perspective, Chase was already perfect.

"…And I'm going to fall even further behind on training, my lotus strike is landing an eighth of an inch to the left to begin with and I can't keep up with…" he said, starting to stand up from the hospital cot.

"Sit back down. Now," Guan said. "You're already injured. Please don't make it any worse for yourself. Please, don't even think about training now, just focus on resting and healing."

"I don't have time to rest, I've got scrolls…"

"If you won't do it for yourself, then do it for everybody else who cares about you." Slowly, Chase returned to his spot on the cot and Guan sat down beside him. "You don't need to prove anything to anyone. Take as much time as you need to…"

"I don't need to waste any more…"

"Chase," he said, taking one of the other man's hands in his. He'd always liked his hands. They were fine, beautiful hands, covered in ink stains and far stronger than they looked. "Chase, please. You work so hard and you never take a break, just for now, let someone else take care of you."

For a while he was silent, then leaned his head on Guan's shoulder and muttered a reluctant, "fine."

_**Space Heater (Sleeping Together (and Only Sleeping))**_

Some people marked changes in the seasons with changes in the weather, the migration of birds, or like normal people, dates on the calendar. Not her.

Even after all these years, Raimundo had never gotten used to the cold. She'd see him in sweatshirts and scarves when it was sixteen degrees out. Getting him out of bed in the winter was an even bigger hassle than usual, usually accompanied by a growling, "My mat is warm. The floor is cold. Don't even try unless we're talking at least ten thousand years of something worse than darkness." She'd seen him sitting _on _the radiator in the middle of winter. She didn't even suspect he drank coffee more for the warmth than the caffeine. Whenever they went on overnight missions, he would drop all pretext of flirting when it came to sleeping arrangements.

"You're like a space heater. No funny business, it's only because you're warm," he'd say, and toss his sleeping bag down next to hers. One of the weird side benefits of being the Dragon of Fire, you are yourself constantly warm and apparently give off a not inconsiderable amount of heat.

Of course, as her and Rai grew closer, it meant protection from random snowball attacks in the winter. "You try that," she would say, seeing him with the offending snowball. "And there is no cuddling during free time. And we're shoveling snow in the rock garden before that today."

Now, she knew Rai well enough to know that he went from his usual disorganized sprawl on his side of their bed to curled up against her starting in early September, when the first hint of a chill hit the air and didn't go back to his normal position until sometime in April or May. At first, she hadn't really liked it. She loved Raimundo, but she also loved her space. But every now and then after a particularly difficult battle with the forces of evil, feeling his heartbeat and his breathing was comforting. After that, it became routine and every time one of them almost died, the other would play around with the thermostat.

**_Witch Burning (Red_**)

The way the sun caught her hair turned it to fire. It's brilliant, just watching it move around her in a great, flaming halo. He decided long ago that she was lovely, one would have to be a fool not to see that, and her hair exceptionally so.

He would sometimes touch it absentmindedly after one of their nights together. It was soft as silk, like a luxury even he couldn't afford. Not that he ever told the witch any of this, it would go straight to her head. Either that or she would start to try to actually do something with it.

He didn't know which option was worse. On the one hand, Wuya was already too comfortable with him and undermining his authority, and on the other, he liked her hair just the way it was. Bright red, long, loose, really, it's a wonder it's not horribly tangled. Not that he has the right to say anything about that. Then again, he's magicked his magnificent mane to remain free of tangles, even in the harshest conditions. Wuya's though, there's no magic to it, at least none that he could study, but it's bewitched him nonetheless.

"Do you see something you like?" she asked, noticing his stare.

"Picturing a witch burning," he said, turning and walking away before he can say anything else.

_**So Help Me Dashi...(Baby Steps)**_

"You just had to teach her to walk didn't you?" Kim said, her head whipping back and forth as she scanned the temple garden for any evidence a toddler could have left in an ill-conceived escape attempt from nap time.

"Don't blame me for this. Ria did this back when she was crawling," Rai said, sending a quick burst of wind through the bushes. No, nothing there. "You'd think she appreciate nap time while she still has it." His laugh was cut short as she glared at him.

"Raimundo Pedrosa, so help me Dashi if you turn this into a giant joke…" You'd think that after over fifteen years, she'd understand that he needed the jokes. If he let himself dwell on the negative, he made stupid mistakes and he couldn't afford that. He wouldn't say anything though, she was upset and worried and he could understand not liking his coping mechanism at this sort of time.

He was actually slightly surprised something like this hadn't happened yet. Growing up in a big family, he'd come to expect small children going off on crazy adventures and Maria had been testing just how far away from supervision since before she could crawl. It didn't make him feel any less like he was having a heart attack though.

"Rai!" Kimiko said, pointing towards the rock garden. "I think I saw something over there!" Without thinking, he turned and they bolted towards the garden. He realized he'd been holding his breath when he saw Maria, sitting uncharacteristically still, at the base of a stone carving depicting Dashi's battle with Wuya.

"Fishy," she said, pointing to the carving.

"Nope Ria, That's Grandmaster Dashi, he was the first Xiaolin…"

"Kim," he said, not even bothering to stifle a giggle. "Trust me, I think the guy would have appreciated being called Grand Master Fishy."

_**Snoopy Punches the Happenstance (Age Difference)**_

"If not for the fact that I'm seeing this with my own eyes, I would not believe that you would be watching bad reality television." Wuya jumped off the sofa when she heard his voice. She still hadn't gotten used to, what Jack referred to as, "Chase's Creeper Ninja Skills." Sometimes, she thought he just appeared places, but that was silly. Teleportation spells were always accompanied by the distinct smell of mint.

"I have fifteen hundred years of history to catch up on and at the moment, I am studying the cultural habits of young adults inhabiting the eastern seaboard of the United States…"

"You're watching Jersey Shore," he said. She wasn't sure if he was just stating a fact or mocking her. It was a fact, and this program was unforgivably terrible, but she was just biding her time until the Werewolf show. It had been forever since she'd seen a real werewolf. She used to have one, Sarangerel, for an ally, but that was long ago. Sara certainly didn't look like Derek either. Also, she didn't know how to change the channel.

"Given the proximity to the capital, one would think that studying the culture of this, "Jersey Shore," would be helpful in gaining leverage over Congress," she said.

"You don't know how to use the remote do you?" It wasn't like he was particularly good with it either. The TV was a recent acquisition. A few of the cats had become hooked on Deadliest Catch after a raid on Jack's basement and had threatened to start clawing the drapes unless Chase got them a flat screen. Of course, they'd started begging for crab not twenty minutes after that, but cats are fickle creatures.

"I know perfectly well how to use the remote. I existed as an incorporeal figure in Jack's basement for over a year, if I don't know how to do something as basic as change the channel then what sort of idiot would I be? I happen to be enjoying this very much," she said, gesturing to the screen, where Snoopy was punching The Happenstance.

"I don't care, my lair, my rules, no Jersey Shore," he said, walking up to the TV and pressing the off switch. She silently thanked him. The Happenstance was getting rather aggravating. "If you want to study history, I have an entire library full of history. If it so pleases you, I have an entire mind full of history. I would rather you ask me the most insipid of questions about history than keep watching Jersey Shore."

Like she would be asking him anything. She wouldn't stoop to that level. She would rather help Jack study for his Modern Europe test than ask Chase anything. She had hundreds upon hundreds of lifetimes of experience when he was, compared to her, still so very young. Just because he'd happened to get fifteen hundred years that she didn't did not mean that he was instantly an expert on everything. She would not ask him about the modern world, she would not ask him about history, she would not lower herself to that.

There was so much new in the world, the few years she lived in it couldn't even begin to cover everything. And having lived almost two of those years without a body, she was enjoying all of the comforts of modern life to their fullest extent now and while it was unnerving to have new experiences every day, at her age too, she had to admit, some of them were delightful. Like ice cream and renaissance sculpture. The things people could do with marble, for an earth witch like herself, creating such lifelike figures from stone was impressive for a human.

Chase's knowledge of everything wasn't exactly infallible either. He'd learned to drive a three wheeled car in the late eighteen hundreds and, if Jack's reaction to the idea of Chase driving his baby was anything to go by, hadn't learned how modern cars worked. He still kept a phonograph for Evil's sake. Even she knew that was out of date. Still, he hadn't let her live down the Demon Box incident or the time he'd caught her playing with the lightswitch.

"I think I'll decline your offer," she said, starting to leave the living room.

"Good. I have much more important things to do with my time than keep you up to date," he said, running his hand through his hair.

"Like moping about how you keep getting fanmail addressed to movie villains," she said, breezing past him and out of the room. She knew she was probably going to regret that later, but it was worth it in the moment.

He was silent for a moment as she walked away, before saying, "And Wuya, just out of curiosity, have you ever heard of Diet Coke and Mentos?" Damn it. She was apparently going to have to take him up on his offer.

_**Forget-Me-Not (Shapeshifting)**_

Wuya normally stayed out of the citadel when Chase was running low on soup. He could be, no, who was she kidding, he _was_ moody and unpredictable. When he started rationing it out, lengthening the time between doses, he was agitated, would fly off the handle for just about anything, but she could live with that. It was the physical instability she couldn't handle.

He'd start getting antsy around mealtimes, as if pacing and training out the anxiety could hold off the impending transformation. She'd never know when it was coming though and she hated to be around him when he finally changed. He was never all there as a dragon. There was something dangerous about him then. There always was, she wasn't afraid of that, but this was a different sort of danger.

As a human, or whatever he passed off for human and she would refer to as human for convienience's sake, it was a thinking danger. If you did not cross Chase, he would not cross you. It was that simple. But as a beast he was unpredictable and that unpredictability scared her. When he didn't transform by will, he didn't know what he was doing and he wouldn't remember what happened later.

Today it appeared that she didn't know it was coming soon enough to leave. She was sitting at the edge of the pond, soaking her feet when she heard the scrabble of claws on marble. Before she knew what was going on, she was face to face with the beast and she realized this time was different.

He knew this time. He was stuck until his body fixed itself and this time he knew it. He would later claim that he didn't remember anything, but in that moment, he laid his head in her lap and sighed. If not for the fact that he was a massive dragon beast, it would have been almost cute. As it was, she ran her hand along his back and smiled. Even if he claimed not to remember, he would owe her for even this small kindness. And was just a bit of returned magic really all that great a price to pay in return?


End file.
